Industry 4.0

“Competition means you either have an advantage in technology, cost, or speed. Digitization helps us to achieve all of this,” says Peter Oberparleiter, CEO of GKN Powder Metallurgy.

The future of productivity and growth

It’s a simple vision and credo that drives our efforts in the fourth industrial revolution. New technologies and solutions are being developed and brought to market at high speed. As with all transformational changes there are countless challenges, ideas and modules how to get there, including: digital transformation, Industry 4.0, IoT, cloud computing, tool machine 4.0, and digital shop floor. At GKN, we manage our Industry 4.0 transformation process through our digital business model.

Full connectivity

Clear roadmap

Improving performance and adding value

Business intelligence enables data-driven decision making

The development of a proprietary business intelligence suit to aggregate, monitor, analyze and automate reports for many business processes has been a core element of the GKN Powder Metallurgy´s digital culture and data-driven decision making.

Connectivity: Digital shop floor and beyond

We have come far enough to master complete connectivity and data acquisition. With more than 1,500 machines digitally connected and permanently providing real-time data, we have set the basis for better decisions on product quality, performance management and cost control.

Transparency and data-driven decisions will significantly change the way we interact with our customers. In addition, data will provide new opportunities for service and business models. Having open and direct communication with customers and partners will streamline value chains, workshops, and logistics between all involved. We are ready to join smart products together with our customers to maintain competitive edge.

Clear road map: Mastering digital change

Digitization and Industry 4.0 deliver clear-cut business advantages. GKN PM’s experience enables us to identify and assign those advantages to projects in a digital business model.

Our experience provides a clear plan and roadmap to focus our efforts in the Industry 4.0 landscape and the way we implement technological enablers for our transformational projects. Following a global assessment, we have quantified specific benefits to the identified projects.

It is the formation of new automated processes and interfaces with our partners that stands at the center of our digital business model. Adding value by making processes leaner, more reliable, faster or more flexible is key to our project Karthago - Shop Floor of the Future.

Project Karthago is our agenda to implement and deploy the full benefit; working on new methods and standards for predictive analysis, connected supply chain, active quality management, and remote control and support.

We have already made progress to capture and digitize the vast majority of our machines.

Our target is to have full remote access to our machines and assets. This will lead to new ways of working and how we manage our shop floor of the future. New organizational and working models will be a resolution.

Our objective is an integrated planning of production and maintenance to reduce downtimes, as well as improving resource allocation for maintenance.

Today, we use real time and historical data to make our decisions. In our projects, we are now investigating and defining cases that will enable us to predict possible events regarding quality, productivity, output and maintenance.

Improving line production with automated in-line quality checks is a clear cut advantage and has been used for years.

Going forward, quality checks including methods, sequence and frequency will be based on real-time process data, historical data analytics, current performance and customer requirements. We are working intensively with partners to develop sophisticated automated in-line quality checks, taking into account visual inspection capabilities such as picture recognizing systems and artificial intelligence tools (AI). Quality management will become a dynamic process.